Setting your ‘Prayer-Field’

This is the second in a series about how our energy (thoughts, feelings, attitudes, beliefs) creates reality. I am calling it How Life Works 101.

It dovetails nicely with the upcoming Happily Ever Now course that I’m offering online on Yoga U, and the live courses you can view on my schedule. After decades of yoga, I have found this work to really bring home the experience of Pratyahara–noticing where I am internally, appreciating it for the clarity it brings, and then adjusting it to where I want to go.

This is from James Redfield’s book, The Secret of Shambhala. Occasionally I re-read parts of this book, and The Celestine Prophecy, just as reminders. And BTW, James, endorsed my Kundalini Yoga book–if you want to know what he said, look at the back cover!

If you are not familiar with the style of James Redfield’s books, they are spiritual teachings in the form of an engaging adventure/mystery story. So in the part I am quoting here, the author is speaking in first person and he is interacting with a peer/mentor named Yin, who is helping him to understand synchronistic events.

“Think about what was happening ” Yin continued, “when you heard the van approaching. You had two choices: You could have thought about that occurrence as a threat or as a potential aid. Certainly you have to consider both. But once you recognized the van, that should had told you something. The fact that it was the same van that we had seen earlier at the crossroads is meaningful, especially since these same people created the diversion that allowed us to go by without being seen. From that point of view, they had already helped you and now were there to possibly help you again.”

I nodded. he was right. Clearly I had blown it.

Yin looked away, distracted by his own thoughts, then said, “You completely lost your energy and positive expectation. Remember what I told you at the restaurant? Setting a field for synchronicity is a matter of putting yourself in a particular state of mind. It is easy to think about synchronic intellectually, but unless you enter the state of mind where your prayer-field will help, all you will do is glimpse the coincidences every once in a while. In some situations that is enough and you will be led forward for a time, but eventually you will lose your direction. The only way to establish a constant flow of synchronicity is to stay in a state where your prayer field keeps this flow moving toward you–a state of conscious alertness.”

“I’m still not sure how to get into this state of mind.”

“One must stop and remind oneself to assume an attitude of alertness every moment. One must visualize that one’s energy is gong out and bringing just the right hunches to you, the right events. You have to expect them to occur at any moment. We set our fields to bring us synchronicity by being ever vigilant, always expecting the next encounter. Every time you forget to keep yourself in this state of expectation, you met catch yourself and remember.”

“The more you stay in this state of mind,the more the synchronicity will increase. And, eventually, if you keep your energy high, this posture of conscious alertness will become your prevailing attitude toward life. The legends say the prayer extensions will eventually be second nature to us. We will set them in the morning as routinely as getting dressed. That is the place you much reach, the state of mind where you have this expectation constantly.

He paused and looked at me for a moment.

“When you heard the vehicle coming toward you, you immediately went into fear. From the sounds of it, they were intuiting that they should stop at the mounds, although they probably had no idea why. But when you went into fear, thinking that they were possibly the bad guys, your field actually went out and had an effect on them, entering their fields and probably making them feel something was amiss, that they were doing something wrong, so they took off.”

What he was telling me was fantastic, but it felt true to me.

(To read more, see The Celestine Prophecy and The Secret of Shambhala)

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Shakta is an AMS certified Montessori teacher, and the author of five well-known Yoga books, CDs and DVDs. Her latest book, The Yoga Way to Radiance: How to Follow Your Inner Guidance and Nurture Children to do the Same, is scheduled for release in summer of 2016, (Llewellyn Worldwide)

One Comment

These books are fun… but I think that they left me with a false belief that a positive, alert mental state must be maintained at all times in order to live a joyful and successful life, thus I began to feel resistance and skepticism toward my own negative emotion – pushing against it when it arose. I find that allowing all emotions is much more productive for me as an individual, because they can be noticed, felt and experienced without attachment and/or resistance. We do not need to spend time amplifying our negative emotions, but even if we do, there is no great badness that comes of negative emotion. It simply highlights and amplifies, intensifying a desire for an improved situation or circumstance. Once we have amplified a preference and we release our residual negative emotions, we slide right into a newly improved situation or circumstance. Allowing our emotions, while remaining unattached to them means that I can feel out right rage over a stubbed toe, then feel the anger dissipate as easily as the pain dissipates within a short period of time. Within moments I can feel ease and flow, love and affection returning to my experience. Knowing that one can never get it wrong and that it is never done can allow us to play with the mixed media of characters, experiences, thoughts and emotions freely without self condemnation. There is no path, but a scatter plot of data that is our life. We can experience many successes and many failures, we can experience many joys and many sorrows… when we allow ourselves the freedom to relax into our life and self, we can drift toward our desired and preferred outcomes. In short, I once believed that I must rid myself of negative emotions in order to achieve a state of flow, but one can not rid oneself of anything… ironically, allowing myself to experience a wide range of emotions with less restraint and self criticism/judgement/resistance/discipline has really allowed me to progress beyond limitations I once held to enjoy more fulfillment, overall. It is true that we are attracting and manifesting like magnets… but it is not true that fulfillment and joy require constant vigilance and positive attention. In fact, you can absolutely ignore a subject and it will improve without your attention to it. 🙂